Tamara D. Toles O'Laughlin

I wanted to go to a college in New York that had a campus life. CCNY always had a pretty nice, sprawling campus in Harlem. I decided to go to law school because of my professor, Michael Perez. He taught a class about the utility of the law and the use of political science. I went to Vermont Law School and did my juris doctor and master's in environmental law and policy at the same time. I did both degrees simultaneously and graduated in 2009. In my second summer, I went to the Natural Resources Defense Council, where I was a legal fellow. Then I went to the Southern District of New York, where I was a law clerk for a judge. It was an interesting opportunity in my second year to do practical work and not just the stuff that I read about in case law. After graduating from law school, I went to the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment in San Francisco, which is now in Oakland, California. Following that, I was able to go to US Virgin Islands to clerk for Judge Julio Brady. After that, I came back home and really wanted to go back into environmental work. I worked for Martin O'Malley at the Maryland Energy Administration. Then I went to the Department of Energy & Environment in Washington, DC. I became the executive director of the Maryland Environmental Health Network in Baltimore. I also became the North America director for 350.org, which is the largest global climate organization in the world. I have the distinction of being the first African American in the history of environmental work to hold a job at that level. That's what I've been doing to date. I'll always be indebted to CCNY for creating a sense of continuity.